You Have a Match(63)

The words may be an excuse, but my mom says them like an apology. “You can’t imagine what it was like, giving her up.”

Savvy and I stare at each other as if we’re on opposite sides of a hole we’ve blown into the earth. We’ve wanted the truth for so long, but this feels less like a truth and more like a grenade.

“But you could have other kids,” says Pietra.

“Oh my god.”

All four adults’ heads swivel to me, which is how I realize I’ve said the words out loud.

“I wasn’t an accident.” I’m just repeating what my mom said last night; it’s the final twist of a key that just got shoved into a lock. The last bit of information I need to confirm an ugly truth. I look over at them to ask, but the answer is already in their faces, was already tense in the air between us back in the hotel. “You had me so fast because you were sad about Savvy, and needed a replacement baby.”

Everybody goes quiet, the battle temporarily forgotten. I wish I hadn’t said anything. It’s worse than their anger, than the lies, than everything else that’s built up to this: it’s pity.

My parents stare at me, ashen, and then at each other. They’re trying to do that freaky thing where they come up with a solution without saying a word. Trouble is, they can’t think of one fast enough.

I swipe at my eyes with the heel of my hand. “Nice.” I mean for it to sound scathing. Instead it sounds pathetic.

My mom shifts toward me, and so does Pietra, like they both want to soothe me but don’t know how. And suddenly the whole thing is excruciating. My dumb eyes all watery, them staring at me, even Rufus coming over to cuddle himself against me like my self-pity is so thick that he can smell it in the air.

“Let’s…”

I don’t let my mom finish. “Fuck off,” I bite out, stunning us all. The words make me feel solid again, rock-hard and unforgiving. I don’t even mean them. They’re just better than crying. “Fuck you.”

I need to get out of here, now.

“Abby, wait!”

It’s Savvy who calls me back when I take off, and unfortunately there’s no way to outrun the queen of cardio and HIIT. Sure enough, she’s reached me before I’m even halfway to my cabin, and I go skidding to a halt to avoid crashing into her.

“Savvy—”

“Abby, wait. Just listen. We’re making progress, I know it. Come back.”

My mouth drops open. I was going for indignant, but I am sabotaged by the fact that I am openmouthed wheezing and Savvy basically glided over here on wings.

“Progress?” I repeat. “I’m sorry, were we watching the same car crash?”

Savvy shakes her head. “It’s gotta get worse before it gets better. Get all the poison out. And it’s finally getting out, and—”

“And we should have just left them alone.”

My voice sounds wretched. I don’t want to be mad. I’ve spent my whole life avoiding this feeling, and now it’s itching under my skin, swelling in my ribs, I know exactly why—but right now mad is all I have. If don’t stay mad it’s going to turn into something much worse.

“And then what?” Savvy asks, lowering her voice and pulling me off the main path. Yet again we have piqued other campers’ interest—not as two sisters, but as a camper mouthing off to a junior counselor. “Never see each other again?”

I’m supposed to lower my voice, but somehow that information doesn’t get past my brain.

“At least we would have had two more weeks. And maybe a chance to do something without setting the whole thing on fire,” I say. And then, privately: Maybe a chance to keep existing in the world without knowing I was nothing more than a fix-it. Runner-up. Second place.

That’s not fair, and I know it. Not to my parents, who never once made me feel like anything less than the center of their universe, even with all my brothers. And not to Savvy, who didn’t ask for any of this.

But it doesn’t make the hurt go away, and right now, I need to go away with it. Give it a place to breathe. A place to scream.

“That’s just like you, though, isn’t it, Abby? Avoiding the issue.” She doesn’t say it in an accusatory way. It’s worse—she’s encouraging me. There’s the same motivational gleam in her eye she gets in her Instagram stories, before she shares her mantra of the week, one of “Savvy’s Savvies.” I wish I could swipe out of it, but real life doesn’t come with force quit. “You’re miserable with all the tutoring, and you won’t tell your parents. You want to be a photographer, but you’re too scared to give your work a fighting chance. You have a thing for Leo, but—”

“Would you shut up?” I blurt. The embarrassment is blind-ing, white-hot, stabbing into every single pore of my skin. “Do you realize what just happened? Everybody wanted you. Everybody did. And instead of getting the kid who followed the rules and got good grades and did all the shit my parents wanted out of a daughter, they got me. Thoughtless, stupid, untalented me.”

This time I’m the one who notices the people pausing around us. Izzy, Cam, and Jemmy chief among them, hovering between us and the cafeteria with the same conflicted looks of people who want to help but don’t know how.

I duck my head, my face so hot I can practically feel it burning the ground I’m staring at.